Wood burning stoves constitute an inexpensive source of heat, and have been used for centuries as a heat source for homes and other buildings, especially in household without access to natural gas.
However, conventional wood stoves suffer from a number of inadequacies that limit their performance. Specifically, conventional wood stoves rely exclusively on fire to drive a flow of combustion air, thus limiting the initial airflow and the ability to dynamically and actively regulate a fuel-air balance in the system, which results in a less than optimal burning environment. The reliance on fire to drive the exhaust also limits the efficiency of the conventional wood stoves since a sufficiently hot exhaust is required to maintain the airflow.
Due to less than optimal burning environment conditions in the conventional wood stoves, large amounts of particulate emissions are produced. This is a highly undesirable outcome of the conventional stoves operation leading to a lower air quality in areas surrounding wood stoves in use, thus possibly causing health problems.
Fire driven air flow in the conventional wood burning stoves may also create usability issues due to a low level of airflow available during a start-up stage of the wood stoves operation.
In addition, many modern wood stoves use a catalyst to lower the temperature necessary to combust carbon monoxide or other products of incomplete combustion. A problem faced by many of the contemporary stoves is that during the start-up mode of operation, the burning period which typically produces the most emissions, the catalyst must be by-passed entirely since the heat from the stove is not sufficient to drive the airflow through the thin tubes of the catalyst. The provisions which would allow such by-pass add to the cost associated with the development and fabrication of the stoves to meet these requirements, and necessitate higher emissions during the start-up.
It would be highly desirable to provide a high efficiency wood (or other solid fuel) burning stove with low emission levels and free of the shortcomings encountered in conventional wood stoves.